This is still an issue. If someone is on the other side of the stairs, you can get stuck with zero capacity to do very much about it. I have had multiple characters die just from being "afraid" of going down the stairs because there are people on the other side. What I would probably suggest is something like how this is handled in Caves of Qud, where trying to move down the stairs results in an attack against the creature blocking them, or otherwise a prompt that asks if you want to do so, shove past them, etc.